Michigan’s Stauskas named Big Ten’s top player

Associated Press

ROSEMONT, ILL.

Michigan’s Nik Stauskas is the Big Ten’s Player of the Year.

Stauskas led the Big Ten with 13 games of 20 or more points.

Wolverines’ head coach John Beilein was named by the media Coach of the Year, while Tim Miles of Nebraska gained the honor from his peers.

Beilein led the Wolverines (23-7) to their first outright Big Ten Championship since 1986. Under Miles, Nebraska (19-11) earned the No. 4 seed and a first-round bye in the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament.

In other honors, Indiana’s Noah Vonleh was named Freshman of the Year by coaches and media. Ohio State’s Aaron Craft was named Defensive Player of the Year and Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes was voted the Sixth Man of the Year by coaches.

Embiid out

LAWRENCE, Kan.

Kansas center Joel Embiid is expected to miss the first weekend of the NCAA tournament.

Embiid got a second opinion on his ailing lower back from a specialist in Los Angeles on Monday, and the school says the physician confirmed the original diagnosis of a stress fracture.

The school says Embiid’s treatment for the injury makes him “unlikely to play in the first weekend of the NCAA tournament.” A potential top choice in the NBA draft should he choose to declare, Embiid sat out Kansas’ final two regular-season games, a home victory against Texas Tech and a road loss against West Virginia. The Jayhawks had already clinched the outright Big 12 title.

Florida, Wichita State stay 1-2

Florida, which finished an unbeaten season in the Southeastern Conference, and Wichita State, which completed an undefeated regular season, are the top two teams in the AP college basketball poll for the third straight week.

The Gators (29-2), who received 50 first-place votes from the 65-member national media panel Monday, open play in the SEC tournament Friday.

The Shockers (34-0) got the other 15 No. 1 votes. They won the Missouri Valley Conference tournament Sunday, the first team to enter the NCAA tournament without a loss since UNLV in 1991.

Villanova moved from sixth to third, while Arizona dropped one spot to fourth. Louisville jumped from 11th to fifth, followed by Virginia and Duke. San Diego State and Michigan tied for eighth and Kansas was 10th.

Kentucky, which has lost three of four, dropped out from 25th, the fourth preseason No. 1 to fall out of the poll in the same season.

The young Wildcats began the year amid a buzz of possibly even going unbeaten.

Kentucky’s freefall has a familiar feel to it.

Last spring the Wildcats lost four of their final five games, including a first-round NIT upset at Robert Morris. That collapse followed Nerlens Noel’s season-ending knee injury; coach John Calipari blames this downward spiral on his team’s inability to execute.

“What I’m trying to get our kids to understand, let’s get back to where we were two weeks ago,” Calipari said during Monday’s SEC teleconference. “Let’s get back to the kind of competitiveness and how we were playing. Some different things we’re going to do in practice, to get our mindsets back to where we were.”